Thomas McKean

Thomas McKean (19 March 1734-24 June 1817) was President of the Continental Congress from 10 July to 4 November 1781 (succeeding Samuel Huntington and preceding John Hanson); he also served as Governor of Delaware from 22 September to 20 October 1777 (succeeding John McKinly and preceding George Read) and of Pennsylvania from 17 December 1799 to 20 December 1808 (succeeding Thomas Mifflin and preceding Simon Snyder).

Biography
Thomas McKean was born in New London, Pennsylvania in 1734, the son of Ulster Scots immigrants from County Antrim. At age 16, he moved to New Castle, Delaware to study law, and he was admitted to the bar in 1755. In 1756, he became deputy Attorney General for Sussex County, and he also served in the General Assembly of the Lower Counties from 1762 to 1776, serving as its Speaker from 1772 to 1773. He was effectively the leader of the Patriots in Delaware, and he was one of Delaware's delegates to the First Continental Congress in 1774 and the Second Continental Congress in 1775 and 1776. Delaware did not sign the US Declaration of Independence due to the absence of the other delegates, and McKean signed the Declaration several years later, possibly as late as 1781. In 1781, he voted for the adoption of the Articles of Confederation, and he also served as President of the Continental Congress that same year.

After the end of the American Revolutionary War, McKean served as Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, serving from 1777 to 1779; he was also Governor of Pennsylvania from 1799 to 1808. He argued for a strong executive branch, and therefore joined the Federalist Party, but he was dissatisfied with his party's compromises with Great Britain and its domestic policies, leading to him becoming an outspoken Democratic-Republican Party supporter. He ousted Federalists from state government positions and became the father of his state's spoils system, and he was impeached in 1807. He died in 1817.